1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to voice verification and more particularly, to a voice verification system that verifies the identity of an individual based on voice samples collected during a telephone conversation.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Voice verification is needed in a variety of systems such as home banking, home inceration, remote database access, ticketless air travel etc. A common requirement of these systems is the need to verify an authorized user's identity who is trying to conduct a transaction at a remote location. Such a requirement is necessary in order to prevent an unauthorized user from gaining access who potentially can cause damage. The danger of an unauthorized user gaining access is especially high in today's computer literate society.
Other types of identification methods have proved to be limited or ineffective in such systems. For example, the use of passwords is limited by the fact that passwords may be forgotten, stolen or voluntarily given to another person. Other methods such as fingerprints, retinal scans etc. are inappropriate for remote transactions because the physical presence of the user to be identified is required. In contrast, voice verification systems provide a means to identify a potential user located anywhere within a telephone network.
Voice verification systems generally operate by comparing speech spoken by a potential user to previously stored speech containing corresponding words in order to identify the user. Usually the previously stored speech is entered into the system by an enrollment function. In a number of systems, the comparison between the spoken and stored speech is based on a measurement of the nearest neighbor distance between corresponding elements. This measurement is usually performed by computer processing of such elements converted into digital form.
An example of a voice verification system is exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 5,339,385 to Higgins, entitled SPEAKER VERIFIER USING NEAREST NEIGHBOR DISTANCE MEASURE, issued on Aug. 16, 1994. Higgins discloses a system that includes a verification module that computes the nearest neighbor distance between a test session and an enrollment session. Higgins further discloses the verification module computing the nearest neighbor distances between the test session and a plurality of additional enrollment sessions from a group of reference speakers. The additional nearest neighbor distances are computed in order to minimize the probability of false acceptance.
Other examples of voice verification systems are exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 5,271,088 to Bahler, entitled AUTOMATED SORTING OF VOICE MESSAGE THROUGH SPEAKER SPOTTING, issued on Dec. 14 1993 and U.S. application Ser. No. 08/510,321 to Naylor et al. Bahler discloses a system incorporating pre-processing techniques such as feature extraction and blind de-convolution, while Naylor et al discloses a system including a word recognizer utilizing Hidden Markov Modeling and a Viterbi Decoder.
Existing voice verification systems have a number of limitations. One limitation relates to the length of time required to enroll or verify a user into these systems. Very often the length of time is to long, which makes the use of these systems inconvenient or unacceptable to many users. Another limitation relates to the accuracy of the existing systems. The accuracy often is poor, due to the use of different phonesets for verification and enrollment.
Therefore, it as an object of the present invention to provide a voice verification system that reduces the amount of time required for the enrollment and verification.
Therefore, it as a further object of the present invention to provide a voice verification system that is accurate even though different phonesets are used for verification and enrollment.